If you are selling anything online while not leveraging Pinterest, you are losing out. Pinterest converts very well. According to Venture Beat, Pinterest generates four times more revenue (per click) than Twitter and 27 percent more per click than Facebook. Moreover, users coming from Pinterest tend to buy more. According to Shopify, Pinterest referrals have the highest average order.

1. Switch to a business account for better analytics

Pinterest offers the most useful analytics I've seen in social media. You can track your boards, popular and trending pins, follower acquisition, etc.

My favorite part, though, is domain stats. If you have a business account and your domain is verified, you'll see all pins from any Pinterest user as well as how many impressions, clicks, repins and likes each pin received. That's one of the best ways to monitor your business activity, catch the trend and support (by likes and repins) any pin that is able to drive sales to your site.

2. Go for product Schema.org

Rich markup allows Pinterest to find the most essential information on your page and show it on the pin page. Rich pins are effective for better conversions. If I see a price underneath the pinned image, I'll know it's for sale. If I click, I am considering buying the item.

Rich pins work well for better traffic, too. According to published data, Target saw a 70 percent increase in visits to its site from Pinterest after creating rich pins for its products.

3. Make sure the image alternative text is descriptive

In most cases, no matter how one pins your product images (a bookmark or an on-page button), by default image alt text is what is going to be used as the pin description.

By controlling what that Pin description contains, you can in some way control what message (and thus intent) is accompanying your product image throughout Pinterest (in all pins and re-pins). Deal Pursue is one of the best examples of how to handle a Pinterest description properly: Each pin contains the product details, detailed deal description and why it's an excellent offer.

Think about all of those people who use Pinterest to bookmark products and deals to create a holiday shopping list: Having a descriptive alt text like that may dramatically increase your referrals and especially conversions.

4. Embrace a more creative visual marketing strategy

Images are not just for fun, any more. Unless you get creative and flexible with your visual strategy, you are losing out in social media big times:

5. Try image hover-over "Pin it" button

Product image hover-over "Pin it" button is the most subtle social media call-to-action you'll see on an ecommerce product page: It's not distracting and will only be visible to those who are interested in your image. That's a very good way to encourage active pinners to bookmark your product to a public Pinterest stream.